Oh gosh, it turns out that old Walt was right: It is a small world after all. Or at least it is to NASA's Curiosity rover, which snapped a picture of Earth and the moon, looming bright but tiny in the night sky, from the surface of Mars recently. In the picture , Earth is so small that NASA helpfully put an arrow pointing to it on the photo it sent out; although scientists say that were a human standing on Mars next to Curiosity, he or she could see Earth with the naked eye . Which is not bad, considering that the planets were 99 million miles apart when the Earth “selfie” was snapped.

City Atty. Mike Feuer's office has secured permanent injunctions that prohibit a controversial medical marijuana business from opening in Mar Vista. The injunctions, issued by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge James Chalfant in January, followed an outcry from Mar Vista residents and a strongly worded warning from Councilman Mike Bonin, who called plans to open a pot shot a “slap in the face to residents” The dispensary was to open in the 3400 block of South Centinela Avenua, a commercially zoned space formerly home to a Mrs. Gooch's market.

On the 529th day of Curiosity's journey on Mars, the rover turned its cameras to the skies and sent back this humbling image of Earth and our moon. Our planet and moon appear as two small dots in the Martian sky, no bigger or more significant than Mars or Jupiter look to us. The image was taken Jan. 31 Earth time, 80 minutes after the sun set on Mars. Although Earth and the moon look small, they are currently the two brightest bodies in the Martian night sky, according to a release from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. If you or I were standing on the Martian surface, we would have no trouble seeing our home planet with the naked eye. PHOTOS: Moons of the solar system Earth does not always appear so bright on Mars.

Newport Beach police detectives have enlisted the help of an FBI lab in their ongoing investigation into the Corona del Mar High S chool cheating scandal. Police asked federal agents for assistance investigating private tutor Timothy Lance Lai , who s chool officials say masterminded a scheme in which a dozen students obtained the passwords and log-on information of teachers and hacked into the district computer system to change grades and access exams.

Bruno Mars and his band wore Saint Laurent in their Super Bowl halftime show. Racked toted up the numbers and concluded that Mars' outfit would cost $5,830 (if one paid for it oneself). [Racked] In an interview with W magazine, Miley Cyrus says her image is calculated and that she wants to encourage girls to go for personal style. "Everyone to me looks like Vanna White," she says. She also says her rustic childhood may have something to do with the crop tops and other body-baring outfits she wears now: “We never were inside, and we never wore shoes, I think it's why I like wearing no clothes so much and I'm always naked.” [W]

Here's the emotion that Sunday's boring Super Bowl managed to stoke: the irritation Time Warner Cable subscribers are feeling for the cable company. And here's the surprising news: The cable company fell on its sword. Kind of. Time Warner Cable announced Monday that it would provide a $5 gift card to subscribers who don't have digital cable and could only watch the game on a standard definition channel. But even the subscribers who have digital TV - the majority - and so watched the game on a high-definition channel get something: credit for the cost of an on-demand movie once it is purchased.

The question dominated much of the nonfootball-related chatter in the run-up to Sunday's Super Bowl: As the featured act of this year's halftime show, was Bruno Mars really up to the job of entertaining a television audience of approximately 100 million people? The answer, it turned out, was yes. But before he could prove it, Mars had to weather a storm of skepticism. He's only 28, decades younger than other artists who've played the show recently, such as Prince and the Rolling Stones.

Bruno Mars plans to stay warm when he performs at the Super Bowl on Sunday in frigid New Jersey Metlife Stadium by wearing battery-powered, heated socks from heated apparel company Gerbing. [Racked] Super model Christie Brinkley turns 60 on Super Bowl Sunday and she proves she can still bring it in a swimsuit by posing on the cover of this week's People. In celebration of Super Bowl weekend the feds announced that they've seized $21.6 million worth of fake NFL merchandise.

The Lodge at Sea Island in Georgia, the Inn at Palmetto Bluff in South Carolina and the Allison Inn & Spa in Oregon took the top spots in U.S. News & World Report's 2014 list of the best hotels in the United States. U.S. News & World Report on Wednesday joined Forbes Travel Guides , AAA and TripAdvisor in ranking luxury hotels this month. The magazine's top 10 hotels in the U.S. included Rancho Valencia Resort & Spa in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., lauded for its extensive renovation of the 45-acre site, and the Grand Del Mar in San Diego, which was singled out for its Tom Fazio -designed golf course and its other awards for exceptional service.

The mother of a Corona del Mar High School student expelled in a grade-hacking scandal warned district officials of a widespread "culture of cheating" at the high-performing school. Newport-Mesa Unified School District trustees announced early Wednesday they had voted to expel 11 students after they allegedly hacked into the district's computer system to change grades and access exams. Some parents warned that as many as 150 students could be implicated in the cheating, but haven't been investigated.